Remember the tale of the Brave Little Tailor? As he’s preparing to eat bread with jam, a bunch of pesky flies settle on it.

He strikes at them killing seven at once. He’s so proud that he makes a banner describing the deed, “Seven at one blow.”

There’s heroic satisfaction in wielding the fly swatter with which you’ve just exterminated an entire squadron. So, too, in annihilating the vampire mosquito, escorting the ant to the circular tin or even Clorox-ciding lurking bacteria.

But what if those “rats” are, in actuality, 84-year-old men? Those “flies” children? Those “viruses” mothers, grandmothers, students, doctors ... human beings?

Ah, but according to Adolf Hitler, they weren’t. They were “sub-human elements,” easy to squash and kick aside — easy to kill.

Dehumanization was the cunning Holocaust tool brandished by the Nazis to crush the spirit of the Jews and other “inferior” beings and ease the guilt of the perpetrators. By guilt, I mean the type of guilt we feel when we know we are entering an arena of turpitude. As for legal guilt? Not even an issue. After all, the killings were sanctioned by the government — of Der Fuhrer, by Der Fuhrer and for Der Fuhrer.

Der Fuhrer who, like the little tailor, wore his banner proudly.

The dehumanization process is gradual. The Anti-Semitic Decrees of 1933-1943 slowly stripped the Jews of their humanness and peeled off their dignity layer by layer; excluding them from practicing law or medicine; stealing their German citizenship and rights; banning them from park benches, restaurants, swimming pools, the military and public schools; burning Jewish-authored books; accosting persons and possessions; confiscating and disallowing typewriters, bicycles, radios and telephones; boycotting businesses and burning synagogues; mocking beliefs and faith; taking away everything that constitutes life as a human being.

Hitler’s henchman, Joseph Goebbels, the “Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,” and his groupies were masters at brainwashing. They used rallies, films, books, teachings and parades to identify Jewish people as “evil, sub-human vermin.”

“So let’s round up the herd, corral them in the ghettos, transport them like cattle, make them dance on command for our entertainment before we strip them naked — literally this time — wield our fly swatters and stack, bury or burn their emaciated corpses.”

But the past is the past. Or is it?

Rwanda.

Darfur.

Page 2 of 2 - Sudan.

Ethnic cleansing — even gender cleansing — persists. And so, during this week of National Holocaust Remembrance, we need to continue to bear witness to man’s susceptibility to effective persuasion and collective violence, as well as to the spiraling dangers of all forms of dehumanization.

Banish banners, embrace brethren.

Amy Orvis is a National Board certified seventh- and eighth-grade Montessori humanities teacher at Marshall School in District 205.